All good things must come to an end..

...or must they? I've moved house internet wise and this blog continues on my small business marketing consultant site Genius Consulting. In addition those looking for writing tips, tricks and riffs can check out my copywriter blog.

I'll leave the articles that are live here in place in case people have bookmarked them or stumble across them, hope what I've written here so far has been useful as its been a pleasure to write.

Big thanks to my new acquaintance, IT guru and all round good egg Robert Stockwell of Elmbrook Computer Services, who kindly pointed out that I was 6 months late putting up this post.

Yet another reason not to take your eyes off the prize

Seth's blog on adversity and the route to success came just at the right time today. Starting your own business isn't easy, especially when you have such specific ideals of what it will and won't be and when. Ideas that lead to genuine success are bound to be tricky to execute (this is also true of great marketing or great product).

The temptation would be to give in and start making compromises, as Seth says "Why bother? The thinking is that we can just pump some more oil or smile and gladhand our way to an acceptably happy outcome."

That was the phrase that did it for me though, "acceptably happy outcome"; nowhere in any of my planning and rationale did that phrase occur. Genius was conceived to reflect its name, to be outstanding, incredible, remarkable, original.

The same has to be true of all marketing and product development. People don't want to buy stuff they see as just "ok" or "acceptable", they want terrific value, great quality, unique features...

So next time you're tempted just to "make do", ask yourself what you set out to do in the first place and why. I'll bet it wasn't to produce something average.

Who's your imaginary friend?

I just read this great post on Copyblogger on why having an imaginary friend (or at least a picture of someone who would be typical of your audience) in mind when you write makes your content better.

Buyer personas aren't new but the act of visualising a specific individual is helpful and  a step not everyone takes. I think the concept goes further than just copywriting; we ought to take our imaginary friend everywhere with us.

Your ideal customer should be there when you shape new products, make changes to your payment or service policies, choose your new locations or any other decision that could impact them and their loyalty to your brand.

3 Ways To Justify an Investment

The 3 Ways


1) Use evidence - it sounds simple but too often we assume the reasons for our decisions are obvious to others (so they raise objections and obstacles we could have avoided) or forget to question ourselves deeply enough on the evidence behind our decisions which can lead to poor decision making.

We should always explicitly ask ourselves, what facts can I gather than inform me that my investment would be a sound one? Is there anything that would point against the spend acheiving what I suspect it will? Is there anything I can do to counter this?

2) Set clear objectives and measurable goals - that age old question, how will I know if it worked? Firstly you need to know specifically what you are trying to acheive through your investment and the scale by which you are going to measure your success, not just the metric but the target too.

3) Follow up to demonstrate the value - it doesn't matter whether this is to yourself or your boss, documenting the successes that resulted from your investment will enable better decision making in future. You can revisit both triumphs and failures and refresh your learning before making other similar decisions.

Missing out on misspellings

Just a really short one - just been doing some keyword research for my parents' company site and I am staggered by the number of searches some either misspelt or differently spelt words run every month (permutations of jewellery for instance). Now to discover how to capitalise on it without looking like we all left school 10 years too early...

The Monkey and The Marketer

This post is dedicated to my dear colleague Abi Stern, with thanks for the discussion that inspired it...
One of the major battles for many marketers is finding enough time for high value activities amongst the sea of humdrum day to day duties, often in support of other business functions and away from their core focus.

We affectionately term this "monkey work"; its not difficult, just time consuming. This is also an affectionate nod to Ken Blanchard's book The One Minute Manager Meets The Monkey, which is ace if you haven't read it. So how do we ensure our monkey time is managed and we have enough hours left to be marketers?

1) Make sure you know who else could perform the task - sure, as a marketer you're a master at your CRM system but does that mean you're the only one with access? Your automatic adoption of tasks without asking who should really do them and whether the responsibility could be shared will lead to too much monkey business and not enough marketing.



2) Make a habit of saying no or not now occasionally - if you allocate certain blocks of time in which you can complete these tasks and stick to them, you'll naturally push back on people's so called "urgent" requests and you'll be amazed how many turn out not to be urgent or how easily the person finds another way to do whatever it is they wanted you to do.



3) Be sure to understand the purpose of the activity - I've been asked to analyse different things in our business more times than I care to count and often when I ask what the information will be used for I get a pretty lame "oh, I just thought it'd be interesting to know". So ask the question, because prioritising other people's idle curiosity is unlikely to be your smartest move.

 Anyone got any other tips they'd like to share?

Social media to define future company bonuses?

Along with the rest of the planet I received hundreds of news stories about Friday's controversial memo from Google CEO Larry Page, the general gist being 25% of every employee's bonus is reliant on successful performance in the social media space this year.

Doing the job that I do, this prompted me to have a think about whether this was a) savvy and b) fair.

I don't feel comfortable offering firm conclusions as I wasn't privy to the exact wording, backdrop and context of the memo but the following thoughts seemed to resonate as I considered the concept:

• Involving the whole business in social media, whether it is technically their job or not is smart. All too often I hear "oh marketing deal with social media", which is true but the strongest teams have allies, advocates and participants across many business functions
• Putting a solid number on the amount of bonus at stake is sensible enough, but nowhere did it get reported exactly what form "success" was going to take or what it looked like. Likely this is confidential information in this case but worth remembering if you are thinking of following in Google's footsteps
• Making the whole company financially invested in the success of a single project is a great way to get everyone pulling in the same direction and encourage cross functional collaboration
• The whole initiative feels quite broad brushed and making people accountable could be tricky. If Joe Bloggs doesn't pull his weight whilst Jane Doe works hard, is it fair to Jane if they miss out on the bonus or good to reward Joe's lack of input if they are awarded the money?

So is Larry loony or a legend? I don't know - I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Vision - the religion of business leadership?

I just got back from a trip to Vietnam and having returned from a country where religion plays a far greater part in everyday life than it does here, it prompted me to think about what we use instead.

One of the thoughts I had about this in a business context was that leaders in a largely secular environment tend to use vision to serve a lot of the same purposes as religion does in wider society.

1) Both vision and religion unite people in a common view
2) Both encourage people to see the bigger picture
3) Both provide a source of strength and direction in the tough times

I'm sure there are more but just taking those three points provides enough of a reason why you'd want to make sure that you have a clear vision for your team or organisation that everyone is bought into.

At what price?

I don't know if it is the stirring effect of launching new product types or the slightly erratic indicators in the economy, but for the last few weeks our office has been abuzz with talk of pricing (just this morning I was sent this post on pricing digital content that is well worth a read); and it's not just us.

So many of the conversations I have with people nowadays, from closest friends to chance business encounters revolve around it. What will people pay? What would we pay? Are we paying too much? Have our recessionary pricing strategies had a damaging effect?

In the post  link to above, Chris Brogan advises against asking your community what they will pay, because they'll low ball it. A valid point; if you're asking, I'm negotiating because you've signalled that there's room to do so.

So how to solve our pricing dilemmas? This is by no means the only approach but it is the one I'm going to try:

1) Find out how much they are paying (competitor research, surveys, market research)
2) Then comes the painful bit - testing. To my mind, the only way you can be really sure of how much your customers will pay for something is to put together a decent message that accurately conveys the value of your product and see if people will pay the price you ask.

The pain bit comes with the fact that you are probably going to have to get this wrong a lot before you find the ideal level to generate the most profit in the long term. Ah well, no pain, no gain as I'm sure you all said as you hit the gym last month!

Are you exerting your influence?

Like most marketers, I love a good graph and look forward to Marketing Sherpa's B2B marketing chart of the week (yes, I am that cool).

This week's chart highlighted the fact that only a third of respondents are using blogger and influencer relations as a tactic in their social media marketing. Why people, why?

Well, I know why. It isn't easy. It takes effort, tact, decorum and there's no guaranteed ROI on your courting of these rare and beautiful creatures.

However when you talk about your product and service online, you are at best self promoting and most likely boring and interrupting to the conversations happening on the platform of choice.

When your industry guru recommends using your product/service to the masses, you've hit the jackpot because they're going to get listened to. You, as Marketing Manager of Company X are not.

We have to spend more time on this guys, this is the new PR and for those prepared to go the extra mile, the benefits may get you somewhere money can't.

Everything that is brilliant and frustrating about internet marketing

Happy new year to you all, just a quick one this morning that made me laugh, a quote from Nuno Ferreira, vice-president and creative director at Leo Burnett that summarised everything that web marketers love and hate about their jobs:


“The Internet has a very short attention span, and it cannot be maintained. One moment you have people's attention, and in the next they've moved onto a video of a kitten sliding on the kitchen floor”
 
Part of a serious article about how Leo Burnett got a year's worth of traffic in 6 days using social media but that particular statement struck a cord with me and gave me a chuckle to start my day.

How bad reviews bite harder

A friend sent me an article this morning which he thought might interest me, detailing a poor review of a technology conference. The article itself (published yesterday morning) was amusingly written and highlighted everything that is commonly wrong with a lot of poorly executed conferences, it made me smile.

Then I looked at the Twitter and Facebook share buttons on the side and winced a little on behalf of the organisers, upon reading it, 55 of The Telegraph's techie readers had decided to share it with all their friends and followers...who turned out to be 80,000 odd people.

The lesson here is clear not just for event organisers but all product and service providers, it is even more important than ever not to upset your influencers - they just got hold of the world's biggest megaphone and when they shout, your customers listen!

Marketing has got to be remarkable

Now that in and of itself isn't news. However, I was struck by just how entrenched this idea has become when I read a recent interview about web phenomenon Groupon's rejection of the Google billions.

Groupon works by getting local businesses to offer remarkable deals for a very limited time span; when enough people sign up, the seller and Groupon split the cash. For enough people to sign up, the offer has to be jaw droppingly exciting and Groupon uses this principle to select which offers it promotes (it is approached by an average of 8 sellers for every 1 promotional spot).

The contrast between this model and the conventional advertising set up could not be more extreme. For Groupon to make money, they have to be sure your product and offer make your proposition virtually impossible to refuse for your target market.

They have structured their whole business model around this principle and have refused a mammoth $6 billion from Google, confident that they can take what is currently the fastest growing company in history (they are 2 years old) and make Google's offer look like small change.

The message for marketers? Being remarkable, not just in your content but in your value proposition, your service and your offers is no longer just a way to get ahead, it is essential for your survival. The world has rebuilt itself around new rules, evolve or die.

3 ways to decide if a good idea isn't good enough

I came across a great post on HBR the other day focusing on killing off good ideas in order to concentrate your resources on a few that then come to fruition. I really liked this as an approach, perhaps because marketers are so often in a position of being idea rich and time poor, often inadvertently positioning themselves as ineffective as a result. (You've all worked with people like that - super creative types who never complete a project because they've got all wrapped up and excited by their next big idea).

So how do we decide which ideas to keep and throw our weight behind and those to let fall by the wayside?

Before I throw in my 2 pence worth, I want to make it clear that I know there are hundreds of possible ways of doing this and these are just my own, another opinion on the pile!

1) Does the idea align with your strategic objectives? Ideally all major projects should support the pillars of your annual strategy and move those lofty strategic aims forward towards a reality.
2) Can we put a dollar value on the benefit of executing the idea? I'm not saying that if we can't we shouldn't pursue it but I'd rather we could, as no idea that fits into this mould can really be a nice to have if the bottom line impact is significant.
3) Who would your team be? Again, you don't always want to avoid pursuing ideas that involve working with people who are likely to let you down and make your life more difficult. Sometimes it is unavoidable; yet I'd allow it to rule things out if confronted with a list of things with similar possible levels of benefit to the business.

The death of an idea

It is an accepted thing to refer to someone as an "ideas person". I was pondering this concept the other day, trying to establish whether it is actually a compliment or not. I reached the conclusion that it is only really a positive asset if people mean that you come up with and execute great ideas, execution being the key bit as an idea is only really truly great if it results in a successful outcome.

Why do ideas fail to become reality?

1) Lack of support from those whose help is needed to execute
2) Lack of commitment from the idea originator and/or team
3) The obstacles are allowed to become bigger than the idea
4) They weren't truly great in the first place - not enough point to motivate people to execute
5) Lack of understanding of either the objective or the route towards it

I'm sure there are many more but these are the ones that annoy me most...

3 Tips For Better Content Creation

We all know that creating content and “publishing our way in” is the way forward right? Marketing gurus who espouse the benefits of content marketing are ten a penny, however as with many things (social media being a classic example) the theory and the execution can often fail to match up due to real world pressures and variables.

For what its worth, here’s a few ideas on how to make sure your content does what you want it to do, rather than negatively impacting your business:

• Create a content creation process map – understanding what all the steps are for successful content creation and how long they take will highlight when you’re trying to cut corners on production because you are busy. Make sure if you are using a variety of different types of content or different mediums, you have a map for each.

• Invest in relevance and value for your customer – I’m not necessarily talking about an expensive all singing all dancing market research project but you do need to spend time making sure you understand what your customer would find most useful. Easy starting points? Look at what already exists that is popular in your space, run a short survey across your database, call some of your key accounts and talk to them.

• Test and record – all too often (and I know I am guilty of this) we form opinions based on what we think we know, rather than making judgements with all the data to hand. Content has so many variables; you need to try altering one at a time and recording the test results faithfully so you can create a detailed picture. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking “My last podcast got no attention, neither did the first one I did – my market must hate podcasts”.

It's all about the people

My initial management training was conducted by a wise man who told me, "It's all about the people; you get the right people and there's very little you can't do, you get the wrong people and you can't do anything".

Time and time again this has been proved correct, both in my own team and in the wider business. Selecting the right people to join your team is an art, but one that can be learned and perfected over time; but what do you do about other people's people?

What can we do when our colleagues make poor hires that impact us and our teams?

1) Understand what a good hire is - This isn't just about who you like to work with or what is right for your function. Make sure you really understand what makes a successful team member for other functions before you start judging other people's decisions. Ask team leaders what they look for in a candidate and why; it may not be your ideal but that doesn't make it wrong for the organisation.

2) Say something - Too often we don't mention our fears to our colleagues about their questionable hiring decisions because we are scared of upsetting them or giving them the impression that we think they are bad at their jobs. Often when I've had a brave moment and said something, the person I am talking to has just looked relieved and been glad that someone else observed the same thing and therefore had the confidence to deal with the issue.

3) Restrict their involvement - Reach out to these poor hires only for the things no one else in the organisation is capable of doing. Leverage your own support network to cover the gaps and minimise the risks posed by that individual to the business as a whole.

It's ok to be grey

This morning we received the tragic news of a colleague's sudden passing away, so I wanted to post the most valuable lesson he taught me as a memorial and tribute to someone for whom I had great respect.

The gist of the lesson: data doesn't have to yield concrete conclusions to be useful

I used to live in a world where data proved things one way or the other. If the results were inconclusive there was inaction.

Since then I have been able to observe how the grey areas often reveal more subtle nuances of an issue, suggest contributions to situations or issues, may present opportunities or challenges that a person just looking for black and white might ignore.

So next time you are analysing something and there are no immediately obvious conclusions, don't get frustrated - look a little closer, you never know what you might see.

The ethics of the piece

Last night as I left the office I walked past 3 girls of maybe 7 years old. They were talking about one of their mothers' friends who they had never met but was at this girl's home where they were all headed. Quite naturally they were pondering what she might be like; "perhaps she will be pretty with nice clothes" said one, "or ugly and single" giggled another.

I found it pretty depressing that these carefree young spirits had already established a link, consciously or not, between beauty, material wealth and your chance of landing a partner.

More disconcerting was that I then realised we marketers were entirely to blame. Whether directly or indirectly our message to women that you can buy happiness and success had managed to put a filter on the world view of these children.

As someone whose messages are directed at businesses, did I need to worry? Where do we draw the line between effective copy and pushing people's buttons? Where does using people's motivators become taking unfair advantage of insecurities that are perhaps caused by market factors beyond their control? (How many of us tacitly implied that our products or services would help our customer survive the recession?)

There are no clear rules, probably no real answers that make both commercial and ethical sense in equal part, but an interesting thought to puzzle next time you need a break from writing a communication strategy.

How much is enough?

Ever asked yourself "Am I spending enough time on this?" Or too much?

An easy way to find out is to work out:

1) What do I expect to achieve? The simple act of goal setting will give you an accurate picture of the relative scale and importance of the task or project compared to others in your remit.

2) Time evaluation: We are looking to assess value out vs effort in; the simplest way to do this quickly is to work out how many hours you have in total. Then assess what percentage of your time will have to be expended to achieve the result.

Ideally the time % should be lower than the result % but equal is fine too. Pursuing more than the occasional effort where the % goes the other way is a quick route to late nights and under productivity.